96-99,101 Crookwath v2.qxp
19/10/2012
17:23
Page 2
CROOKWATH BARN AND COTTAGE
Giving
peace
a chance
Art, music and a remote and beautiful
location make Richard and Gina Farncombe’s
home and holiday cottage near Ullswater
especially attractive. Sue Allan visits them
and calls in also at Gina’s studio nearby
Photography by Phil Rigby
t’s a glorious morning in Matterdale as
I head to Richard and Gina Farncombe’s
home at High Row, near Dockray,
and when the hidden valley of
Dowthwaitehead and Aira Beck opens up in
front of me I’m struck by how wonderful it
must be to live in a place like this.
The barn conversion where the
Farncombes live is next to their original
cottage, which they now let as holiday
accommodation. Richard takes care of the
cottage bookings and works as a remedial
masseur in Penrith’s Angel Clinic. Gina is
an artist and yoga teacher and their children
have flown the nest, with son Jeremy in
Kendal and daughter Emily in Leeds.
Richard starts by showing me Lucy’s
Wood, just across a field, telling me about the
wood as we walk with his labrador Jen:
“Our daughter Lucy got cancer when she was
15 and before she died said she wanted
everyone to be able to enjoy a wild place, so
I
96-99,101 Crookwath v2.qxp
19/10/2012
17:24
Page 3
Gina in her studio bothy at Ulcat Row
in Matterdale; below: a carved stone
near the entrance to Crookwath
Barn; opposite page: Crookwath Barn
and Cottage are on the far left
when this 25 acres of fellside came up we
bought it, planted 6,000 English broadleaved
trees – and 16 years on we now have a wood.”
With the sun shining through the young
trees, we walk a circuitous route via wooden
benches, Buddhist prayer wheels, carved
stones, a swing and a stone-built horseshoe
seat with spectacular views over the Ullswater
fells and Aira Beck with its waterfalls and
pools below.
It’s a quiet and contemplative place, with
the only sounds being birdsong and the
rushing of the beck. And it’s a place the
Farncombes love sharing with other people –
walkers who just happen upon the wood and
audiences for the Music in the Wood concerts
they put on in Lucy’s Barn, an ancient
structure Richard restored with friends and
family in 1998. The four concerts they put on
in 2012 raised more than £5,000 for Hospice
at Home Carlisle and North Lakeland, and
two weekends of folk, classical and jazz music
are being planned for next year.
The barn is always open so walkers can
call by any time, and judging by the visitor
book they often do and are entranced by this
unique space with simple wooden benches
and a labyrinth painted on the floor, in the
centre of which a lamp burns for world peace.
“It’s a wonderful place to listen to music,”
Richard says. “The acoustic is perfect.”
Just four years after restoring the barn,
Crookwath Cottage came up for sale and the
Farncombes bought it. So, as Richard says:
“Everything changed because of Lucy.”
The main rooms of the Farncombe’s home,
Crookwath Barn, are all on the first floor: a
light and spacious kitchen with pale blue
painted units and oak worktops and
cupboards, an ingenious larder cupboard
with slate shelves, insulated doors and a vent
to the outside, a cream Aga and views over
the valley from the large window. The
unusual kitchen table was made by Richard ➨
November 2012 CUMBRIA LIFE 97
96-99,101 Crookwath v2.qxp
19/10/2012
17:24
Page 4
The bright kitchen, which has a table Richard uses to make bread, opens onto the dining room
and a friend from offcuts of oak glued
together: “The end grains are brilliant for
chopping as they’re so hard,” says Richard.
“And I always make my
bread on it too.”
The kitchen opens onto a book-lined
dining area, overlooking the sitting room and
with another table designed by Richard with
a yin and yang inlay.
The double-height sitting room has lofty
beams but is a cosy space with warm colours,
floor to ceiling curtains, comfy sofas and a
rustic stone fireplace with log burner.
Next to it, the sun room-cum-spare
bedroom has a clever pull-out bed and
breathtaking views to the Ullswater fells. The
trompe-l’oeil bookcase on the wall apparently
hides a secret passage, currently blocked off,
to the next door cottage.
Above, there’s a little bedroom straight out
of a fairytale, with a bed tucked under the
eaves and a shuttered window looking out
over the living room. It’s a room any child
would love and the resident teddies show it’s
used by the Farncombe grandchildren when
they visit.
The barn conversion grew organically,
says Richard: “We extended the cottage to
create a bedroom and shower room first.
Then a couple of years later we did the next
bit and so on. We didn’t use an architect but
did have some great workmen, including the
Dickinson brothers from Ullswater who did
all the woodwork.”
Downstairs from the kitchen – past a tiny
carved wooden door to a hole in the wall
Gina had made especially for children to
explore and hide their treasures in – off the
flagged hallway, are the master bedroom and
a shower room with custom-made curvy
wooden shelves and a circular shower lined
with travertine marble tiles. The bedroom is
another room with an amazing view – of Mell
Fell across the valley and red squirrels, tempted
on to the windowsill by a feeder full of nuts.
Despite being a holiday cottage,
Crookwath Cottage next door feels like a
well-loved family home with its books,
games, open fires and big and beamed
farmhouse kitchen with Aga, bookshelves
and squishy sofa. The original range is now
an open fire in the long sitting room, whose
deep red walls show off Gina’s paintings of
local landscapes and sheep. All three
bedrooms sport original art made by family
and friends as well as great views.
After I’ve seen round the Farncombe’s home
and holiday cottage, Richard takes me to meet
Gina, who is working at her studio two miles
away at Ulcat Row. The quaint bothy she rents➨
The sun room, with views of Watermillock Common
The yin and yang table made by Richard
The master bedroom with custom-made shelves
98 C U M B R I A L I F E
November 2012
96-99,101 Crookwath v2.qxp
19/10/2012
17:25
Page 5
➨
Left, from top: Richard on a swing hung on a
beam between the kitchen and dining room in
his home; the tiny door for the Farncombes’
grandchildren; Gina doing yoga in her studio
Above: the holiday cottage has a
colourful interior, with many of Gina’s
paintings hanging on the walls
November 2012 CUMBRIA LIFE 99
96-99,101 Crookwath v2.qxp
19/10/2012
17:27
as her studio is lined with paintings as well as
works in progress and boxes of cards featuring
her work. She took part in the C-Art Open
Studios in September when more than 200
people came to see her work.
“Of course we’re also on a footpath and a
cycle route, and I did offer teas and coffees
and lemon drizzle cake,” says Gina. “I made
£330 for Eden Community Outdoors, the
charity my son Jeremy works for.”
Much of Gina’s work on the walls appears
to be watercolours and pastels, but she says
she is primarily an oil painter: “This year,
though, I broke out and decided to do
watercolour as I love the fluidity of it. I was
inspired by an artist called Ann Blockley, who
just lets the paint do what it wants and only
slightly controls it. It means you never quite
know it will turn out – which I like.”
Sheep seem to be a popular subject. Gina
smiles: “Yes. Two years ago when we were
blocked in by snow I just painted the sheep in
the snow all around me. I absolutely fell in
love with Herdwicks. They just accept the life
they’ve got, trotting out every morning to dig
and get at the grass and eating reeds.
“This ram here is called Percy,” she says
picking up a portrait of a Herdwick tup with
curly horns. “Percy was a prize ram, although
he always walked with a limp because his
back leg was badly pecked at by crows just
after he was born.”
love the vibrant colours she puts into the
Cumbrian landscape, although Gina says
they sometimes frighten people: “I really
see that vibrancy in the landscape and
often paint a warm colour like red on the
canvas first. It’s the complementary colour of
green and creates a vitality and excitement.”
Many of Gina’s landscapes were painted in
France including a woodland scene in
Burgundy with dappled light among the
leaves. It was created in an unusual way, says
Gina: “It was a very hot day but beautifully
cool in the wood, so I sat in this ride in the
centre of the forest with much rustling in
the undergrowth, which I think was wild
boar. Eighty per cent of it was done upside
down, painting marks which seem to give it
energy and movement before turning it over
to finish.”
Nature informs her work, whether it’s
landscape or animals, and she likes sketching
people’s faces too. Lots of her drawings are
on her computer – puppies snuggled together,
Richard driving, Richard reading the paper
and grandchildren – so she can show people,
believing that sketches are a glimpse into the
mind of an artist.
Does she paint primarily for herself or
with an eye on a potential market?
She laughs. “Oh, I’m too long inLife
the tooth
for that. I just do what I want to.”
Page 6
Lucy’s Wood and Barn
Richard and Gina with their black Lab Jen in Lucy’s Wood, planted in memory of their daughter
I
■ www.crookwathcottage.co.uk,
tel: 01768 482378 or 07826 822914
www.musicinthewood.co.uk
www.ginafarncombeartist.co.uk
www.northlakesyogagroup.org.uk
Above and below: Lucy’s Barn, with Gowbarrow in the background
‘Before Lucy died she said she wanted everyone
to be able to enjoy a wild place, so when this
25 acres of fellside came up we bought it’
November 2012 CUMBRIA LIFE 101